Getting to Know You: Rhapsody in Orange Trolleys
by Cybele1
Summary: Harry and Severus discover that it's the little things which count. HP/SS spells Slash.


Title: Getting to Know You: Rhapsody in Orange Trolleys  
  
Author: Cybele  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Summary: Harry and Severus discover that it's the little things which count. Another instalment in the series which examines the happily ever after of Harry and Severus.  
  
Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns their names and their backgrounds. But she probably wouldn't want to own that which they've become. I own my twisted imagination.  
  
A/N: Thank you Sophie for the title.  
  
Harry stepped out of the floo and into Severus' chambers at Hogwarts. He smiled fondly as he was greeted with scattered boxes, each one carefully packed and labelled, faintly humming with anti-breaking charms.  
  
"Severus," Harry called out. He was answered by a non-committal grunt which came from the bedchamber. Harry weaved carefully around the boxes and made his way to his lover. His partner. His soon-to-be living companion.  
  
Snape stood with his back to the door, apparently contemplating a stone wall in his increasingly empty room. Harry came up behind the older man, wrapping his arms around the thin waist and laying his chin on Snape's shoulder. "All right?"  
  
Snape nodded, but Harry could tell there was something amiss. He wondered if the man wasn't feeling a tad bit sentimental about leaving his residence of nearly a quarter century. Or maybe it was having to resign as the Head of Slytherin in exchange for the freedom of living outside of the castle.  
  
With Harry.  
  
Harry nuzzled into the man's hair and sighed. "It's a lot to give up, eh?"  
  
"What?" Snape turned his head. "Oh, don't be ridiculous. I am not dwelling, Harry. I was merely trying to decide whether or not my service to this wretched school has earned me the right to keep my pillow."  
  
Harry furrowed his brow.  
  
"It's a perfectly good pillow. One which has served me well longer than you've been feeding yourself."  
  
"Severus, I thought we'd agreed to buy everything new," Harry complained with a slight whine to his voice.  
  
Severus glared and pulled out of Harry's arms. "I refuse to wake up every morning with a sore neck because you hold to your foolish romantic notions about new beginnings." Snape walked deliberately to the bed and picked up the pillow, cradling it to his chest possessively as he walked to the sitting room.  
  
Harry paused for a moment. He wouldn't press the issue. He'd learned long ago to choose his battles carefully with Severus and he wouldn't let something like a smelly old pillow cause a rift between them. Even though Harry couldn't imagine why someone would want to use the same pillow for twenty-odd years. Even if it was a Wizarding pillow.  
  
Shoving off the thought, Harry walked back to the sitting room. "So, are you ready, then? We should go soon. Superwizworld starts getting crowded around 10 and I hate being stuck in floo traffic."  
  
Snape looked up from the box in which he'd packed his pillow and pursed his lips as though struggling for patience enough to repeat, "Superwizworld." He shook his head in a gesture that said, 'The things I put up with.'  
  
"Sev-Severus. We've been through this." Harry really didn't want to go through this again. "It's easier to find stuff there. And more efficient. They have *everything* under one roof."  
  
"And that, Harry, is precisely what's wrong with your generation. You'll buy anything, regardless of quality, so long as it's quick and takes no more than one brain cell to locate."  
  
Harry took a deep breath. "I'll give you the chance to take that back before I remind you that it was *your*generation who was responsible for their creation. And that the guy who owns Wizworld was in *your* house."  
  
"And it was quite ingenious of Zambini to anticipate the overwhelming demand for the abomination," Snape said with a dismissive wave. "But you should take your cue from the fact that the entrepreneurs who open these...these glorified flea markets would not be caught dead actually shopping at them."  
  
Snape raised himself to his full height, hands twitching triumphantly.  
  
"We're going. You're not getting out of this. Get ready."  
  
Snape's momentary triumph escaped him with a deflating hiss.  
  
***  
  
Severus stepped out of one of what appeared to be hundreds of flooing stalls contained in a large cement underground chamber of sorts. His mouth dropped into an expression of vague terror as he was met with thousands of wizards and witches in cheap ready-made robes, pushing squealing trolleys filled with white plastic sacks the noise of which grated along that one last nerve Severus had left. Mothers and fathers bickered as they tugged along snivelling toddlers, whining about this or that missed toy.  
  
Noise. Noise and classless hoards of commoners who had no understanding of the words Wizarding Pride. That was Superwizworld.  
  
He might have flooed directly back to Hogwarts if Harry hadn't bee blocking the stall door, staring at him with a wide grin that said, 'See, I told you it wasn't so bad.'  
  
Severus found himself in the rare position of being speechless and was thus unable to hex Harry before the blasted brat dragged him through the gates of hell. Severus was blinded by the unnaturally, inhumanely bright whiteness of the superstore, coloured only by scattered piles of mass- produced rubbish.  
  
Snape took a moment to mourn the slow death of the family owned shops with their dim lights and their dusty shelves. Some old wizard behind the counter who had been there for the last century and would likely wait on the next generation as well. Confronted with this grotesque den of artifice, moulded, shiny goods with no value whatsoever, Severus realised he was witnessing the end of the world. Armageddon. The fall of man into the deep abyss of consumer evil.  
  
"Severus?"  
  
He glared over at Harry.  
  
"You're holding up the crowd. Why don't you go pick up a trolley, hm?"  
  
Harry ushered Severus toward several rows of plastic (more plastic, Merlin help him) carts. The older man reached out to pull one of them along just as a younger woman with a small child reached for the same cart. Severus turned to the woman and glared down his nose at her. Pulling her child out of range of that glare, the woman walked off, clearly offended.  
  
Severus smirked and tugged the trolley free before wheeling the ridiculous thing over to where Harry stood reviewing a list.  
  
"Right," the younger man said, not looking up to see Severus as much as sensing Severus' aura of disdain. "So, we need bath towels, wash clothes, toothbrush holder, bath mats, bed linens..." Harry sighed. "Everything, really. How about...I'll go see what they have for drapes and you can go look at bath stuff." Harry waved his hand in a vaguely western direction and then started north, abandoning Severus with his dreadfully vibrant orange plastic trolley.  
  
***  
  
"Oh good, there you are," Harry sighed, dumping a load of various household items into the trolley. He glanced up at his lover who was glaring into a basin of what looked like squeak toys. Harry snorted. "Thinking of picking up a bath toy, Sev?" he teased. His smile abruptly faded at the sight of the murderous regard the man turned on him. Harry hadn't seen *that* look since his fifth year at Hogwarts.  
  
Severus spun around and began walking a way before turning back to the basin. Reaching inside he picked up a small, yellow duck with an orange beak. He narrowed his eyes at the thing. A high pitched sigh sounded as the duck was crushed mercilessly within Severus' powerful grip. Tossing the thing irritably into the basin, Severus walked off muttering something about cheap imitations.  
  
Harry wondered for a moment what that scene had been about, but, taking a second look at the contents of the shopping cart, decided there were other issues which needed to be discussed.  
  
"Severus?"  
  
"Are we finished?" Severus grumped, walking briskly toward the door.  
  
"Er...Severus? We...will you please stop?"  
  
Severus froze and spun around with his eyebrow raised.  
  
Harry took a deep breath. "Listen, I know you like black. And it's a perfectly good colour..." Harry looked down into the shopping cart to avoid Severus' challenging glare. "But...does *everything* have to be black? I mean. Severus, for the bathroom? Black just doesn't say 'clean' to me." Harry sighed and looked back up uncertainly.  
  
"And I suppose you think that sunshine yellow shouts sanitary!" Severus spun on heel and began walking again.  
  
Harry watched after the other man for a moment with a befuddled look. Severus seemed rather insistent upon his chosen colour...or anti-colour. Harry wouldn't push it. He would buy a nice light blue shower curtain...or perhaps pale grey...  
  
***  
  
"Harry, we've been here two hours."  
  
"Almost finished," Harry said, plucking a long rectangular box off the shelf and throwing it into the cart.  
  
Severus glanced down. And stopped.  
  
"What. Is. That?"  
  
"It's..."  
  
Severus' eyes ran over the label which read Lubricum in bold blue letters.  
  
Harry apparently noticed the look of utter disgust on his partner's face because he began explaining quickly. "I just thought...I mean, you work so much. And since you don't *have* to make the potion...I thought...er. Well, it wouldn't be quite as good as yours, but it would work and..." Harry grinned. "It's on sale."  
  
"I will ask you to kindly keep your bargains out of my arse," Severus hissed.  
  
"But Sev, it's fifty percent off. And the lube you make would cost twice as much for the same amount. It's..."  
  
Severus stared.  
  
"I'll just put this back on the shelf, hm?"  
  
Harry reached into the cart cautiously and extracted the container, handling it as though at any moment the thing might explode.  
  
Severus continued walking.  
  
***  
  
"No! Not that one, this one's shorter," Harry insisted, pulling the cart toward a queue of four people.  
  
Severus pursed his lips. "Do you see that woman?"  
  
Harry turned to look at the woman in question: an old witch wearing a long, orange robe and a very severely tight bun at the back of her skull. She clutched a green hand bag close in one hand and a basket of three or four items in the other.  
  
"What about her?"  
  
Severus sighed as though Harry was missing something painfully obvious. "That woman will be difficult," he predicted.  
  
Harry stared pensively for a moment before huffing, "Severus, this line is still shorter. That other one will take ages."  
  
"Harry, look at that line. It is filled with impatient little twits like yourself whose only thought is to pay for the junk that they're buying so that they might get on with their incredibly useless, consumer-minded lives."  
  
"Severus." Harry pursed his lips and gave an exasperated look.  
  
"Fine. Have it your way."  
  
***  
  
*Thirty minutes later...*  
  
"Shut up."  
  
"I didn't say a word," Severus said, not bothering to hide the satisfied smirk as they exited back into the flooing chamber. "Besides, you seemed to have kept quite busy. Though I don't see why you insist on spending your hard earned galleons on Muggle trash," he added, casting a disgusted look at the magazine Harry had picked up at the check out.  
  
"I like to stay informed," Harry muttered.  
  
"Indeed. 'Is Your Bloke a Keeper'," he read aloud. "You'll of course let me know what you find out."  
  
"Severus," Harry said stopping and tugging on Severus' robes. He took a deep breath and stared up at the man. "I can't take you anywhere," he smiled, raising onto his toes and planting a kiss on the man's thin mouth.  
  
"Let's go home," Severus said, readjusting the horrid plastic sacks which were threatening to cut off the blood circulation to his fingers.  
  
Harry grinned broadly and stepped into the floo. He turned to take one last look at his partner, his lover, his best friend before flooing off to prepare for the rest of their happily ever after. 


End file.
